Biden shrinks Trump’s lead in latest Times/Siena poll

President Joe Biden has nearly erased Donald Trump’s early polling advantage, amid signs the Democratic base has begun to coalesce behind the president despite lingering doubts about the direction of the country, the economy and his age, according to a new survey by The New York Times and Siena College.

Biden and Trump are now virtually tied, with Trump holding a 46% to 45% edge. That is an improvement for Biden from late February, when Trump had a sturdier 48% to 43% lead just before he became the presumptive Republican nominee.

Biden’s tick upward appears to stem largely from his improved standing among traditional Democratic voters — he is winning a greater share of voters who supported him in 2020 than he did a month ago. Then, Trump had secured the support of far more of his past voters compared with Biden — 97% to 83% — but that margin has narrowed. Biden is now winning 89% of his 2020 supporters compared with 94% for Trump.

UNCONCERNED

The tightening poll results are the latest evidence of a 2024 contest that both campaigns are preparing to be excruciatingly close. The past two presidential elections were decided by tens of thousands of votes in a handful of battleground states, and this one could be just as tight. In a nation so evenly divided, even the tiniest of shifts in support could prove decisive.

Beneath the narrowing contest, many of the fundamentals of the race appear largely unchanged.

The share of voters who view the nation as headed in the wrong direction remains a high 64%. Almost 80% of voters still rate the nation’s economic conditions as fair or poor, including a majority of Democrats. And both Biden and Trump remain unpopular, for familiar reasons. Most voters think Biden is too old. A majority believe Trump has committed serious federal crimes.

The survey comes just before Trump’s historymaking criminal trial in New York City, the first for a former U.S. president. He faces charges related to falsifying records related to a hushmoney payment to a porn actor. The case is one of four involving felony indictments against Trump, but it is the only one so far with a trial set to begin before the election.

Yet, despite the potential for the Republican nominee to face jail time, only 1 in 4 voters said they were paying very close attention to Trump’s legal travails.

QUESTION OF AGE

The Biden campaign, which has already begun advertising in battleground states, has hoped the reality of a potential second Trump term will snap reluctant Democrats back toward their typical partisan posture. There is some initial evidence of that happening.

In the past month, Biden’s support among white voters remained flat, but it has inched upward among Black and Latino voters, even if it still lags behind traditional levels of Democratic support. Biden was faring better than he had been a month ago in suburbs and among women, although he was weaker among men. Younger voters remain a persistent weakness, while older voters provide a source of relative strength for the Democratic president.

The poll’s overall margin of error was 3.3%. But the results among subgroups are less statistically reliable because there are fewer respondents in them. Still, the poll showed Biden with his strongest performance among nonwhite voters among the past three Times/Siena surveys since December.

Age, however, remains a political albatross for Biden.

UNIFYING FACTOR

Sixty-nine percent of voters still see the 81-year-old Democrat as too old to be an effective president. Trump, who turns 78 in June, would also be the oldest president in American history if elected. But voters do not have the same doubts about his capacity to serve, with only 41% viewing him as too old.

There was one notable shift in the past month. Among voters who are older than 65, the share who view Biden as too old has dropped significantly.

The economy also continues to be a drag for Biden, who has tried to frame his “bottom up and middle out” job agenda under the banner of “Bidenomics.” Young voters are especially sour, with more than 85% rating the economy poor or fair.

Voters in the poll gave Trump’s and Biden’s handling of the economy almost perfectly inverted ratings: 64% approved of Trump’s handling of the issue as president and 63% disapprove of Biden’s job on the issue now.

Immigration gave Trump his other biggest edge among a host of issues voters were asked about in the survey. Border crossings hit record highs at the end of last year. A slim majority approved of Trump’s handling of immigration as president, while 64% of voters disapproved of Biden’s job on those matters.

In the poll, Biden was given better ratings than Trump on his ability to unite the nation and his handling of both race relations and the pandemic.